Time Word Search

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calendar

When the Gregorian calendar arrived in 1582, ten days vanished: people slept on October 4 and woke on October 15.

midnight

Midnight marks the boundary between two dates, though many older cultures began the new day at sunset rather than in darkness.

morning

Roosters crow before dawn because an internal body clock anticipates sunrise, so they call out even in a windowless, darkened room.

twilight

Twilight comes in three stages, civil, nautical, and astronomical, each ending as the sun sinks a little deeper below the horizon.

sunrise

The sun you glimpse at sunrise is actually still below the horizon; the atmosphere bends its light up over the edge.

century

Because counting began at year one, not zero, purists insist a fresh century opens in years like 2001, not 2000.

evening

The evening star is not a star at all but the planet Venus, often the first bright point to appear after sunset.

schedule

British and American speakers split over this word: some open it with a soft sh sound, others with a hard sk.

tomorrow

Once written as two words, to-morrow, it slowly fused into one; the double r still trips up plenty of spellers.

weekend

The two-day weekend spread worldwide only in the twentieth century, as labor movements pushed employers to grant a second rest day.

season

Seasons come from Earth's tilt, not its distance from the sun, which is why summer and winter swap between the hemispheres.

minute

The minute is a Latin shorthand for the first small part of an hour; the second was simply the second small part.

yesterday

The Beatles song named for it became one of the most covered tunes ever, with thousands of recorded versions worldwide.

hourglass

Sand runs through a narrow neck at a fairly steady rate, so the top can be tapered without upsetting the timing.

fortnight

A fortnight means fourteen nights; the tidy word stays common in Britain but has nearly vanished from everyday American speech.

In their words